Sorry, I didn’t have the time to read what you shared

How many times in the past few months have you asked a friend or colleague if they’ve had time to go through that doc you had sent them? How many times out of these instances have you received a hesitant “sorry I didn’t have time” or “oops, must have gone to my junk folder”? Frustrating, I know.

A lot could be at stake if people don’t pull their weight in reading materials when it comes to teamwork and collaboration — you could fail at an important project, miss a deadline, or simply fall out of the loop in an important matter.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the person you sent the information to — how often do you really feel like thoroughly going through everything you receive in your email? Chances are, not that often.

So who’s to blame — the one who sends it or the one who doesn’t take the time to read and reply? Neither of the two — it could just be that the content you’re sending is anything but attractive and inviting people to read it. Here’s how to change it.

Focus only on the very important.

Use highlights, snippets of text or summaries of the content you’re sharing. The chances that a one-pager with only the most important stuff will be read is a hundred times higher than a person going through dozens of pages of content that’s not even relevant. Simplicity really is key and less is more when it comes to text.

Lumio is an easy-to use bookmarking tool that lets you highlight only the most important snippets of text which you want to save and go back to later.

You can forget about information overload and focus only on the content you think your reader will actually find relevant and useful. If the reader gets intrigued and wants more information, they can simply access to the source information and go read more if they like.

A picture can tell a thousand words

Actually 60 000 words. In fact, research shows that the brain can process images 60 000 times faster than it does text. Maybe what you want to share can be communicated through a simple graph, a tutorial video or an image.

It’s incredibly easy to gather, organize and share visual content with lumio — from pictures, Pinterest pages to video and infographics. As an almost seamless Chrome extension, just hover your mouse over the image and wait until the saving option comes visible. Lumio is always available when you need it, it doesn’t require any additional effort or resources to use and it’s never on your way or affecting your browsing experience.

Make sure it is functional

When thinking about content or information, your first thought wouldn’t necessarily be usability. But if it’s content you have to work with, research, process, and remember, it should be made as easy to use as possible. Have a look at the image below and answer this — would you rather have a collection of different kinds of content presented this way as we did with lumio or as an Excel worksheet of links or a Powerpoint presentation?

Present the content in a unique and functional way and you’ll have much more luck appealing to various people who process and use information differently.

Lumio also allows you to rearrange cards of the saved information as you please, just drag and drop — no clutter, no problem.

Avoid email if you can

Admit it — in everyday and urgent situations, email has become a thing of the past. Now, it’s all about collaboration platforms. It’s much easier to use them and the communication in the collaborative space is often much less formal — allowing people more self-expression and inspiration to actually get more done in a shorter period of time.

By sending a lumio collection of curated ideas and content though Slack or any other messenger will not only provide a higher chance people are actually ready to reply in a second, but also encourages immediate and collective feedback about the collection of content you sent. On the other hand, using quicker ways of communication to send lumio collections ensures a faster response. A win-win situation for both sides.

Pick the right timing

It’s a widely known fact, that Tuesday and Thursday are best for sending out important messages or emails (sometimes you just can’t avoid them). Don’t underestimate the low energy levels of Monday and Friday or the mid-week blues of Wednesday. In case you don’t need urgent feedback from the person you’re sending the content to try sticking to these two days.

About 24% of message and email opens occurs within one hour of receiving them. So if it is urgent it’s important you pick the right time of day. You’d think mornings are the best time to send messages. But as about 40% of all messages are sent before noon, it leads to clutter and too much information at once which people naturally don’t feel inspired to deal with all at once. Instead, try to send your message in the early afternoon to receive much better focus and response rate.